Girl Scouts celebrate 102 years

There are only three days left in one of the best seasons of the year.

Girl Scout cookie sales season is upon us and no better way to celebrate today, Girl Scout Day, than to go out and buy a box of those beloved confections.

Happy is an office or home that is descended upon by a box — or preferably two or more — of Thin Mints, Samoas, Savannah Smiles or Tagalongs. There are eight varieties in all.

With a little research you will find that a woman named Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low is credited with the advent of Girl Scouts of America, following an encounter with Robert Baden-Powell, a lieutenant general in the British Army.

Low had been splitting her time between her home in Savannah, Ga., and the British Isles where she had a home with her husband, a wealthy Englishman who died in 1905.

When Low met Baden-Powell in 1911, he had just written a book on scouting and survival skills a few years earlier and essentially started the scouting movement.

During the first Scouting Rally, a number of girls appeared in scout uniforms, calling themselves “girl scouts.” Baden-Powell had thought that girls should not be in the same organization as boys and so his sister Agnes and his wife Olave St. Clair formed the Girl Guide movement in 1910.

After Low met Baden-Powell in 1911, she returned to her home in Savannah about a year later and, according to many sources, called her distant cousin and said,“I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, and all of America, and all the world, and we’re going to start it tonight!”

On March 12, 1912, Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low assembled a group of 18 girls from Savannah for the first ever Girl Scout meeting. The organization started as American Girl Guides but the name was changed to Girl Scouts a year later.

Low was athletic in her youth. She was a strong swimmer, captain of her rowing team, avid tennis player and learned to canoe as a young adult, yet she was deaf from a youth plagued with ear infections and from a piece of rice that was lodged in her ear. She died of breast cancer in 1927.

According to girlscout.org, “In developing the Girl Scout movement in the United States, Juliette brought girls of all backgrounds into the out-of-doors, giving them the opportunity to develop self-reliance and resourcefulness. She encouraged girls to prepare not only for traditional homemaking, but also for possible future roles as professional women—in the arts, sciences and business—and for active citizenship outside the home. Girl Scouting welcomed girls with disabilities at a time when they were excluded from many other activities. This idea seemed quite natural to Juliette, who never let deafness, back problems or cancer keep her from full participation in life.”